You probably know Ken Stringfellow as the co-leader of Northwestern power-pop all-timers the Posies or as a sideman for R.E.M. or latter-day Big Star. He’s also a solo artist (we’re particularly fond of the soft-rock American beauty that is 2001’s Touched) and is currently preparing the debut by his Norwegian garage-rock band, the DiSCiPLiNES. Each day this week, magnetmagazine.com guest editor Stringfellow will be filing reports from his home on the European continent.
Stringfellow: Last year I played the Midnattsrocken Festival, which takes place on a grassy spit of land outside of Lakselv, Norway, well above the Arctic Circle. Drawing a crowd of a couple thousand (the equivalent of the town’s entire population), the festival offers Norwegian and international bands; it seems they like serious rock for their headliners (last year: Europe; this year: Deep Purple). The DiSCiPLiNES were headlining the second stage, which was a small tent, and had a great, great show. Long after “The Final Countdown,” at about 3 a.m., I was lying on a beach about 150 yards from the stage. Lying on the sand, in full sunlight. Not quite Santorini warm, but very comfortable. Occasionally I would look back toward the still-raging festival grounds, which were washed in full daylight, so the normally nighttime actions of drunk Norwegians were unobscured: the pissing, the barfing, the very messy making out and dry humping. Fabulous. Seeing full drunken anarchy in a park setting reminds me a bit of 28 Days Later, everyone all ragged and zombie-eyed and staggering/chasing/shambling and making arhghrhghghghgh noises. I turned my face back to the tranquil bay in front of me and was really overwhelmed. The information coming in was so at odds with my inner clock and my body’s store of experiences that it sort of broke me down, in a good way. I was leaving the next day to play another festival, and thus had to turn down the offers from some of the rockers who came from Sámi families to take me way out into the country to hang with the reindeer. By the way, “Laplanders” is very un-PC; it was never the term these people used to describe themselves and, in fact, has pejorative connotations.
You probably know 
Stringfellow: Welcome to my official condemnation of the French music scene. In France, to succeed in music, you have two choices: 1) be the son/daughter of someone famous or 2) be the son/daughter of someone rich and/or powerful. The bands you know—Daft Punk, Phoenix, Air, Justice—are not bohemians by any stretch of the imagination. They all hail from Versailles, which is the Connecticut to Paris’ Manhattan. Sorry to burst your bubble, but none of these bands could have existed without the endless support and leisure time that is the birthright of the petits bourgeoisies. And so on; there’s a host of other similar ones that you don’t know about, since they are only big here. I am sure if I were to dig in the background of the latest thing from Paris, I would find a similarly jewel-encrusted skeleton in its very large, walk-in wardrobe. And on up to the highest bed in the land; in France, the standard is set: Be born the daughter of a gazillionaire, move to a country where his tarnished rep won’t be tracked by scandal sheets, have the best surgeons alter your face to the standards of the modeling industry, use your subsequent fame and (Photoshopped) looks to seduce the best songwriters in the land to write your albums for you, and one day you too can grow up to marry a president. France has perhaps the most disastrously ebbing music industry in Europe, and because of these standards—and their results—it’s not really a mystery why such a cynical strategy would lay waste to what should be, at least sometimes, a refuge from such thinking.